GIving it a chance

[Dr V R Hetrick]

I sent this comment to the maphist-L and, per my comment at the beginning of that originaI email, I am posting a copy of the email on the forum to which I have already registered.

My point was and remains the following based on three years minimal participation in a forum and more than 15 years participation in another listserv. I have only been subscribed to the maphist list for a couple of years.

When I began participating in the forum, for the first several weeks, I read everything new written any place on the forum to which I had access. Then, I began to look at how I was spending my time. It was not in a good way. I was spending between three and four hours per day just reading and barely commenting.

Then I looked at the volume of email on the other listserv to which I referred. Typically, since I didn't read it in digest form, it took me less than 45 minutes per day by the time I added all the times I logged into my email and found something from the listserv in my inbox. The number of new messages that I would categorize as non-trivial in the email inbox compared to the number of new messages that I would categorize as non-trivial in the forum was about 1.5 times as many, even though the total number of messages in the forum was double the number of messages in the listserv.

So, I've decide to give the forum a chance. But, if it turns into the same time sink I found in the previous experience by the end of week 3 or so, it's highly likely that I will not be reading everything and will only write when I have a question.

v
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Virginia R. Hetrick, here in sunny California
Email: drjuice@uw.edu
"There is always hope."
My fave: http://www.washington.edu/cambots/camera1_l.jpg
There's no place like: 34N 8' 25.40", 117W 58' 5.36"
if you can't be at: 48N 6' 59.9" 122W 59' 54.2"
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